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Scotland, UK and Sterling. An interesting piece.
Scotland, UK and Sterling. An interesting piece.
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'Koz weev goat ILE.'
You've also got aggregated bank balance sheets at 1250% of GDP. Cyprus and Iceland were at 500% when they went to the wall, and look at the damage they did with economies at 10% the size of Scotland. rUK doesn't have anything like the resources to offer a safety net for you. Since present North Sea revenues are dwarfed by the costs of bailing out those great Scottish socialists at RBS and HBOS, avoiding a currency union is perfectly viable. |
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that argument seems a wee bit slanted though. All the UK has ATM is a paper loss on its shareholding of those banks. Oil is very much real and the revenue from amounts to a much larger amount than the paper loss.
if the banks went tits up again, TBH it's all academic as it'd be a systematic meltdown. |
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I mean when you say "we", do you mean the people? Because I doubt very much if they'd put that to a referendum.
I'd bet big that in the event of a YES, there will be a currency union. All this crap from Miliband about putting it in his manifesto ffs. How many party manifestos have ever been adhered to? Utter sh1te. |
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those great Scottish socialists at RBS and HBOS
I won't pretend to understand much of the rest of your post ics, and I certainly don't know where you got that ^ from! |
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If foregoing that revenue is a cost the rUK has to wear to avoid exposure to Goodwin practices in Scotland again, it would be a veritable bargain. Instability is far more dangerous than making allowances for x being removed from the national balance sheet. The £65bn pumped into RBS/HBOS is far greater than the equivalent governmental oil revenue since that bailout. The cost of bailing out banks and financial institutions is high, and it is unrealistic to expect an independent country to do that. Independent Scotland wouldn't underwrite someone else in that way or on the terms that are being proposed.
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can you base voting for independence on the basis of the HQ of listed banks? Shirely they can relocate at any moment to a number of different countries?
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the general opinion of the Edinburgh based banks is 'vote no'. You are right, they'd probably relocate and likely to England.
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Not definite, but I think banks and financial institutions have to technically be based in their home country, but can have 'facilities' elsewhere.
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You'd have to set up a stock exchange too for the companies in Scotland.
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given they have pretty deep pockets, I imagine they'd argue, perhaps legally, that they have a right to choose between UK and Scotland as their 'home'.
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It might not be home, it might be principal country of operation, can't be sure, read about it years ago, but they could definitely argue to be rUK if that's the case. I suspect Salmond would make a deal to persuade them to stay though.
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ics - A Goodwin type could pop up anywhere. Before him this man made RBS a burgeoning company.
Respected former head of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Sir George Mathewson has expressed his anger over the way information on the independence referendum is being distorted. Sir George has spoken out after UK Chancellor George Osborne visited Scotland this week and claimed the rest of the former UK would not want an independent Scotland to share the pound. In an interview with the Times newspaper, the highly respected former banking giant criticised the current UK Chancellor and former Labour Chancellors Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown. “I cannot understand why the sterling zone would not wish to have the revenues from North Sea oil and the benefits of all the other Scottish exports, such as whisky, to support the currency," he told the Times. “It’s one failed Chancellor, George Osborne, adopting the same tactics of another failed Chancellor, Gordon Brown, seeking to influence opinion by saying: ‘Let’s use fear.’ “This kind of tactic will not work. To have one more snooty English person coming up and telling us how things are going to be ... in most parts of Scotland, it won’t be all that meaningful." Responding to arguments that an independent Scotland would not have a great deal of influence over Bank of England policies, he said: "We might have a scintilla more influence than we have at the moment. But then, at the moment, we’ve no influence at all." Sir George poured scorn on suggestions that an independent Scotland would not be better off and dismissed claims over EU membership and interest rates as "side issues". "We’ve got the UK, the most in-debt country almost, in the whole world — and somehow it’s a disaster for Scotland to have its own economic government? These are almost side issues and they’re based on fear. These things will be solved and worked out in due process and due time, and if it’s the Bank of England currently with effective control over the interest rate ... that’s the way it is at the moment." Sir George was scathing of another former Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling saying his claim that an independent Scotland could not have coped with the collapse of HBOS and RBS, had "forever coloured him in my eyes”. He said. "The reason RBS was bailed out and HBOS was bailed out is because the whole UK economy was threatened. You don’t bail out banks because of where their head office is, or because of what their name is; you bail out a bank because if you don’t, your economy is going to go down the tube." Sir George said there was no such thing as a national bank and pointed out that almost all of RBS business in the UK had been carried out in London by Nat West. "It’s taken a long time for people to understand that. RBS’s head office is in Edinburgh, but 95 per cent its business was done in London. NatWest was a subsidiary of RBS. Who owns a bank doesn’t make any difference; it’s what it does." |
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“I cannot understand why the sterling zone would not wish to have the revenues from North Sea oil and the benefits of all the other Scottish exports, such as whisky, to support the currency,"
I cannot understand why anyone would class what has been proposed by Alex Salmond and the SNP as anything approaching independence. I cannot understand why any supposed independent country would expect another independent country to underwrite any potential mess ups. “This kind of tactic will not work. To have one more snooty English person coming up and telling us how things are going to be ... in most parts of Scotland, it won’t be all that meaningful." Whereas the tactic of Salmond deciding what is best for rUK and how it should proceed isn't the other side of that same coin? If independence occurs, both independent countries will act in self interest. The rUK will want full control of its currency, and it won't want an independent country's balance sheet on its books. If the rUK is such a basket case why is Salmond, a self professed hater of the pound, 'that toxic sub prime currency', so desperate to forge a currency union? What is he up to? Trying to say anything to get the vote? Fearing a migration of business south of the border? Who knows. As for RBS and HBOS, they were bailed out as UK banks because Scotland is part of the union. Those banks wouldn't have been bailed out if Scotland was independent as there are difficulties with nationalising a bank of another country! The UK helped Ireland, but it didn't nationalise Irish banks, it loaned Ireland the means to nationalise its banks to ultimately be repaid back. The UK loaned Iceland money, it didn't nationalise its financial institutions. This is a different dynamic and is about as much as you can expect from another independent country. Considering iScotland wouldn't be able to provide any such help to rUK you've got a decent deal there. |
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ics, I've already indicated that I'm not an expert. You appear to think you are, but for now I'll take the word of the man who made RBS a massively successful business.
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No expert. Just observations. So why does Salmond want the pound?
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He doesn't sumo. If enough people wanted to trade in sheep he'd be baaaahing all the way to the polls. A few years ago the pound was a dead currency to him and plenty of others. The euro was the place to be. Then we had the arc of prosperity which turned into the bag of shiite. He's a politician. If you asked him to dance on your great grand mothers grave he'd ask you if you wanted him with or without a kilt on.
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Why not ics?
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Take your pick from any SNP document on the subject between 1999-2012...
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